https://twitter.com/CultureCrave/status/1678968736680902656
I take no pleasure in informing you of this, but we're in the red.
What do you mean, 'red'? We're losing money? We are losing money. How are we losing money? It seems that no one wants to watch anymore.You access the almighty algorithm of objective assessment: Rotten Tomatoes.
They're saying our plots are "lacking object permanence" and "a gray blob of nothingness." There's got to be something we can do! Tell ChatGPT to write better!| RHETORIC – Impossible: Convince a Large Language Model to exceed itself. || RHETORIC – Impossible: Convince a Large Language Model to exceed itself. |
If you fail, you just get a bit about how what you want is impossible.
If you succeed, you get a fork where ChatGPT actually manages to write something really coherent and meaningful - and then in a future conversation you get served a notice that you're being sued for plagiarism.
If you don't log in to twitter you can't read the thread there, but I found it on "threadreaderapp": https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1678960256586776576.html
And right on cue, here’s the inevitable Deadline article claiming that the AMPTP and their CEO bosses are ready to wait us out and let us “go broke.”
They’re not. They can’t. This studio propaganda, and here’s why.
In the increasingly mega-merged and hedgefundified Hollywood, these companies live or die on their quarterly earnings reports. It only takes one bad quarter for their stock price to plunge, putting the company and the CEO’s job in jeopardy.
But their stock prices are holding steady, right? Right. For now. Because our industry is a pipeline that starts with writers. The TV and movies they’re releasing now are shows we started making for them 4-12 quarters ago. But what happens when that pipeline runs dry? What happens is they run out of product. No new shows in streaming to drive and sustain subscribers. No new shows in broadcast and ad-supported to bring in ad revenue.
No shows, no money. No money, bad earnings report. Bad earnings report, bye-bye stock price. Bye-bye CEO. After 70+ days with no writers to create their product for them, the pipeline is running dry.
Their stock price isn’t tanking yet. But if they don’t make a deal with us, it will.
And they know it. If they make a deal soon, they might be able to weather it. Stretch out releases. Rush some new stuff through.
But the longer they keep us out, the longer that pipeline runs dry, the more unavoidable a catastrophic dip in new high-quality shows becomes.
And they know it. So yeah, the studios are planting articles in the trades that make it sound like they’re so determined not to pay us the 0.02% of company revenues we’re asking for that they’re willing to hold out forever.
Bullshit. I’m sure the AMPTP bosses would love to break our union. But they love their jobs more. They love money more. They can’t make that money without us.
And they know it.
Ignore the trades, walk the line, stand together, and win. #WGAStrong
Big claim from Disney considering the number of flops they've produced this year. Sure, good luck existing without people to make the shit you sell.
undefined> When government raises interest rates, it is signal to the capitalists to start disciplining workers.
If you don’t believe me, look at what happened during the last WGA strike, which took place from November 2007 to February 2008. What happened during those 3 months?
The Fed Fund Rates dropped from 4.7% in November 2007 to 3% in February 2008, as the country was trending towards the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) era in the wake of the great financial crisis. By October 2008, the Fed Rate would drop to near 0%.
you say they raise interest rates to respond to a strike but then immediately talk about them lowering interest rates during a strike
but Disney isn’t just movies. They’re a conglomerate of various products and investments and subsidiaries. They can hold out quite long.
There is, bizarrely enough, a market incentive to prioritize a short term loss. Wall Street will reward Disney shareholders for refusing to negotiate with talent, because they're going to calculate a long-term steady state of growth for Disney with the expectation that wages won't grow and profits will. Cutting a deal will reduce Disney share prices long term, while holding out means the stocks will remain artificially inflated by speculators betting against the unions.
it’s incredibly easy to find enthusiastic scabs who are eager to enter the industry
YMMV. Scab content is easy to find, but its an unattractive long term investment. That's one reason you see them rolling guys like Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis onto the stage well past his expiration dates. Hollywood is a very closed community with lots of trust issues. Producers trust Ford and Willis in a way they simply don't trust New Guy I've Never Heard Of Before.
I suspect we're going to see the big production houses lean that much harder into AI generated content, just to see if they can find a model that sticks. Because, if the top execs had it there way, they'd make Harrison Ford the leading role of every movie produced forever.
It was such a scam that everyone bought hook, line, and sinker
It’s so dumb because imagine how easy it would be to have a centralized media service. Fucking capitalism
I've fantasized heavily about a post-capitalism streaming that just has all the media on it and the only difference between "services" is curation.
